EXCERPT: “A common refrain from Minnesota Republicans goes something like this: Rural communities are overtaxed, underfunded and ignored by legislators. Greater Minnesota sends their tax dollars to the Twin Cities, where metro residents benefit from government programs. At a Nov. 15 event in New Ulm, Republican State Sen. Gary Dahms repeated the sentiments that have fueled the kinds of outstate Republican campaigns that helped them win the Minnesota House a decade ago: ‘If you look at the money that’s collected in rural Minnesota, for gas tax and things like that, we do not get our fair share for transportation. If you look at health care, we do not get our fair share for health care,’ Dahms said, according to the New Ulm Journal. ‘It really shows up in education, when you see what we get per student, versus what the seven-county metro area … there is a major, major difference there.’ It’s a sweeping argument that plays into the state’s often bitterly divided partisan and geographic politics, which have become deeply intertwined during the past decade, with Republicans dominating greater Minnesota while the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has locked down the metro. It also simplifies a complicated web of tax and revenue distributions — and it’s factually untrue.” FULL STORY: https://fluence-media.co/3TstetZ
